OF FIG LEAVES, ART AND OTHER DISPUTES

OF FIG LEAVES, ART AND OTHER DISPUTES; Israel: Antiquities For Sale: Plunder or Boon?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: April 19, 1987

FROM REMOVING FIG LEAVES on Italian masterpieces to censoring films in Hong Kong to protecting antiquities in Israel, culture the world over provokes heated debate.

Following is a roundup of reports from 12 Times foreign correspondents about cultural issues that have sparked controversy and discussion in their countries. In addition to reflecting the inextricable connections among art, money and politics, their reports show that countries throughout the world are struggling to maintain their cultural heritage and that television - its control, programming and funding - is an increasingly important concern.

At a time when the Greeks are trying to recover the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, and when Egypt is trying to get its Nefertiti statue back from Berlin, some prominent public figures in Israel are fighting to maintain an open trade in Israeli biblical antiquities.

Unlike its neighbors, Israel does not ban the sale of original antiquities to collectors or tourists. Anyone can buy a Bronze Age pot or a vessel of Roman glass from Government-licensed dealers. While technically the buyers may not take them out of the country without permission of the Department of Antiquities, few bother with formalities. They either pack them with their souvenirs or even deliberately smuggle them out.

For some of Israel's leading young archeologists, this practice is nothing less than historical rape. Most of the objects being sold come from illicit excavations, usually conducted by untrained villagers looking for buried treasure. They dig in burial caves or mounds wherever they can, rip out the salable pieces and leave the rest in a pile of rubble that is of little use to archeologists.

''If we stopped the sale of these items this illegal digging would not exist and more important sites would not be destroyed,'' said Amos Kloner of the Government's Department of Antiquities. At the same time, he added, a sales ban would wipe out the open market for antiquities and at least curtail their flight abroad.

Mr. Kloner and some colleagues have proposed an amendment to the 1978 Antiquities Law that will outlaw the private sale of antiquities. But it has opponents - most notably Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, who is also chairman of the Israel Museum.

Mr. Kollek argues that a ban on selling antiquities would be both counterproductive and impractical, because it would only force the whole business under the table, the Government could still not police the trade effectively and the end result would be that the best pieces would leave the country while the mountains of ancient commonplace jugs, coins and oil lamps would pile up unsold.

''Sure, all of our neighbors ban the sale of antiquities, and if you go to Paris, Zurich or Munich you can see their pieces on sale there,'' says Mr. Kollek. ''I say we should restrict the sale to a small number of responsible dealers who are controllable. If there is a local outlet there is a much greater chance of the most valuable pieces being brought forward here and going into Israeli museums.''

''The question,'' said the archeological historian Neil Silberman, is ''whether antiquities in Israel should be viewed as a finite historical resource that must be protected by the Government, or whether they will be the object of a modern cult of relics in which pieces are distributed far and wide in order to reinforce people's attachments to the biblical story and modern Israel.''